Moving Out

Dear Hostel mates,

Now that I am vacating, you people can sleep peacefully. Kindly contribute and help me set up a house. I accept anything to do with homemaking, from a spoon to a car. Please contribute generously. You can keep the warden.

Yours truly
....

The Hostel Crowd is getting younger and more hip. So me, the antique piece has decided it’s time to move out.

A doctor of the Ayurvedic kind, who also happens to be my school friend suddenly got dropped from nowhere and we decided to be house-mates. Got a two-bedroom house not far away from where I am staying currently.

Now, It’s time I decide between pateto, potato, tameto or tomato but there is Bread and there is Jam and there is Maggie and I’ll survive.

I will miss my hostel mates and my room immensely. Aged between 21 and 27, we were Engineers, Journos, Nurses, Architects, HRs, Writers, Lawyers, Sales and Marketing executives, CSRs, Receptionists and Admins. There were friends, who were the only earning member in the family that their parents actually didn’t want them married. There were those who earned fat salaries but saved every pie for dowry. (Seems a good husband cost nothing below Rs. 50 lakhs). I laughed at it all but I guess I did that cos my community do not practice dowry. There were those who shouldered responsibility to construct their own house and move out, those who supported a less accomplished elder brother also those like me, who never save and only shop.

On a week-end, I see these girls coming out and going in. There is a certain resplendent aura that they exude. Perhaps, it is independence, perhaps it is youth and I am proud I was one of them.

We practiced the birthright of a woman- gossiping over potato chips and magazines. The lofty minds got together and discussed sales, males and lingerie, fiancés and finances, carried tales or was the mother of some tales and kept a secret together. The woman in me was sometimes an eager participant in all these.

I’ll miss all the ”Have a nice day!, How was your day?” greetings. I always had someone to talk to and someone who understood and someone who would collect my clothes when it rains as I continued my slapdash ways.

When I was very young, we left our ancestral home to stay in the VIP area. (The only area where there is no power cuts or water shortage) We shifted many a times to many quarters until we built another house again. Through it all, I learnt to enjoy each place and cherish the people I associated with. Nowadays, everybody is mobile and adapt anywhere but as a child, there was a certain longing for a place called home, for stability and consistency.

Pompy blogged that there is an immense pleasure in even buying a spoon for a place called home. I can only echo her words. Perhaps, I’d die of happiness if I were to marry and settle down in her sense. I am all excited for now. Need to set up the kitchen and everything else from scratch. I am already thinking about curtains and colour co-ordination. I don’t know how many of my dreams I can live but I haven’t stopped dreaming.